Caleb Stegall Prophesied The Trumpening

No, really. Back in 2006, I commissioned Caleb to write a piece for the Dallas Morning News about prospects for American populism. Here’s a link to the piece. In it, he describes a country ripe for a new kind of populism, and offers a model. Excerpt:

There’s an irony inherent in a system like our own that identifies the individual as the fundamental unit of political, social and economic order. Because it shears the individual of the republican virtues cultivated within communities of tradition in the name of empowering him, it actually makes the individual subject to tyranny. Limitless emancipation in the name of progress is, it turns out, the final and most binding mechanism of control.

When the oldest sources of order – which are at root religious – are abandoned along with their traditions and taboos, the resulting void of meaning is by necessity filled with some ideology promising one form or another of perfect happiness in the here and now. And these systems of self-salvation creep not toward liberation, but toward total control.

Populism in its progressive form is not immune from this utopian yearning, which must always end in disaster. So our neopopulist moment ought to be approached with sober awareness that an angry mob is probably worse than a corrupt bureaucrat. The same bureaucrat who has harnessed the anger of the mob with progressive dreams is far more terrible than both.

What is called for is an anti-progressive populism; an anti-movement movement; a return to what is near, known and particular. What is called for is what I think of as regional populism. Its first political task will be to rediscover the ways citizens of the old American republic used to think and talk.

Then:

It may be too late, things too far gone, for the kind of Anti-Federalist regional populism I am describing to become politically viable in our day. If so, we will likely be tossed between the tyranny of a militantly nationalist populism and the stifling bureaucratic rule of a progressively universalizing liberalism. Neither is a welcome alternative.

Re: It was only when the Supreme Court, in one of its many usurpations of the role of our unchallengeable “philosopher kings,” invented the doctrine of incorporation in the 1920s that it was deemed to apply to state governments.

The 14th amendment was crafted to apply to state governments from the get-go– that was not something the Court invented. If you think otherwise then the 14th amendment is meaningless– it was drafted to prevent state and local governments– not the federal government– from denying the rights of the newly freed slaves, but was written broadly so it applies to everyone.
Also the Founders generally did not support established churches, and worked (politically not constitutionally) to end them at the state level.

My sarcasm was likely ill intended. I apologize for denigrating anyone’s contributions so far… except M_Young. Ahem. My friend, do you really want to open the argument by exception can of worms? How many ancestries of any description can claim to be squeaky clean with every single one of its members? If I wanted to make such a claim for immigrants as a group, I would have written “closest” instead of “closer”. You should know me well enough by now that if I wanted to make a blanket statement, it would clearly be stated as such.

William, the dynamics of the time — citing historic evidence, I may add — are quite clear. The conflict between a nascent federalism and the long-standing sovereignty attitudes of the colonies cum states was the largest obstacle in creating a union. That’s why The Federalist Papers were primarily propaganda, only secondarily indicative of policy intentions.

You and I are guilty of modern projection on the past. We have 230 plus years of changes, not the least of which is Jon’s reminder that the framers are long since dust. My argument, as such, is that they gave us a system with boundaries but within which there is much flexibility. That passage of time proves just how necessary that flexibility was and is.

As for establishment of religion… please join me in considering the hypocrisy in a system that guarantees religious freedom to an individual within the nation but allows any state to take it away. Whatever their original intentions in the final draft of the First Amendment, I cannot accept the ambiguity that you describe.

Bobby, were you responding to me? You must have noticed from time to time that there are people who comment here as “SJ” and as “SJay.” Neither of them are me. I don’t know whether the former is a member or admirer of the Society of Jesus, but I know I’m neither.

Moving on to substance, I believe you are attempting to project an asymmetry that does not exist. True, conservatism can only be truly conservative, in the best and highest sense of the term, if it ceases trying to be an ideology. But, by the same token, liberalism can only be truly liberal, in the best and highest sense of the term, if it ceases to be an ideology. When Rod’s back is to the wall in some culture war scuffle, he condemns the other side for its illiberalism. In essence he calls upon liberalism — in the best and highest sense of the term — to save him from his illiberal enemies, while he condemns mainstream liberalism for being illiberal.

I would suggest that a constitutional framework, such as we have, understood largely as Franklin expounds it, framed in the best and highest Enlightenment values, and within that, a conservative appreciation for conserving that which is good and has stood the test of time, is probably the best we can hope for in human society.

Which brings me to William Tighe, whom I was almost agreeing with for a moment, but he spoiled the moment with his ragged rhetoric about “the Supreme Court, in one of its many usurpations of the role of our unchallengeable “philosopher kings,” invented the doctrine of incorporation in the 1920s.”

The Supreme Court was acting conservatively, and dodging an invitation to judicial activism. The Fourteenth Amendment was a duly ratified amendment. It unquestionably imposed on the states restraints in favor of the liberty of the individual citizen. The exact contours were not spelled out. Rather than elaborate the meaning of “liberty” and “due process of law” as seemed best to their personal philosophies, the justices applied the existing language of the Bill of Rights, in part, to the states, as it has already applied to the federal government.

In doing so, the court saved us from a good deal of petty, narrow-minded state tyranny that would have shocked the framers of most state constitutions during the first half of the 19th century, and reasonably fulfilled the manifest purpose of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment.

As for establishment of religion… please join me in considering the hypocrisy in a system that guarantees religious freedom to an individual within the nation but allows any state to take it away.

Well, no, that’s not hypocrisy. At the time the “more perfect union” was formed, the Congregational and Episcopalian churches were each established in some states, not in others, while some, such as Pennsylvania, were already so polyglot as to have no established church at all, not even the Quakers. Both the congregationalists and the Episcopalians had hopes of becoming the officially established Church of the United States, and the First Amendment as applied to the feds, but not the states, precluded ANY church so dominating the entire nation.

The rights of individuals were, arguably secondary, at that time. All states had pretty well abandoned religious establishment by 1836, and the new state constitutions of the 19th century were written in even stronger nonestablishment language than the First Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment did, as several of us have now highlighted, set forth protections for individual liberty that states as well as the federal government must respect.

I find arguments that “things change” dangerous when it comes to constitutions, because if there are not carefully defined criteria, then a “living constitution” is no constitution at all, because it can mean almost anything someone in a position to rule decides that the passage of time requires it to mean NOW. Pure Originalism has a similar problem: the document would be so rigid that every time anything changed in the real world, we would have to ratify a constitutional amendment to account for it.

The jurisdictional categories of the constitution can be rationally applied to new circumstances without doing violence to the original meaning of the words. My favorite example: At the time the constitution was adopted, most commerce was intra-state. By the mid-20th century, most commerce was inter-state and international. Thus, without requiring amendment, and without doing violence to the plain meaning of the text, the jurisdiction of the federal government to regulate commerce is much more extensive today than it was in 1789.

I am very skeptical about any call to “the People” as a metaphysical entity endowed with will, or even about “the People” as an abstraction.
The concept of “People” is meaningful only if understood in its historical meaning, that is as in opposition to “Aristocracy”. This was how the word was understood, e.g., in “The Senate and the People of Rome”, meaning an alliance between patricians and plebeians, and during the revolutionary period between the 18th and the 20th Century, where in the latest stages it was “the People” vs. “the Bourgeoisie”.
In the case of the US, the People probably was to be construed as in opposition to the “Aristocratic” British rule – probably with an eye to the ancient SPQR meaning, given the republican ideals of the Founders.
A distinction has then to be made between ‘the People’ and actual people. A populism serving the interest of ‘the People’ has litte bearing with a populism serving the interest of actual people.

The framers made clear that the legitimate source of authority in the United States was the consent of the people governed

this consent notion is a myth as much as the concept of We The People. When the CSA ‘dissented’ it wasn’t exactly considered as a diminution of the state authority. And exactly how has the functioning of the Supreme Court a bearing with the notion of ‘consent’? Reality is that ‘the People’ is a useful abstraction during revolutionary periods, when the new order has the need to achieve legitimacy by depicting itself as the true interpreter of the presumed will of ‘the People’, seen as a monolith.

My posts form a gestalt. Your points are well taken, but in the end I stand on my modern projection onto the past. It looks very much like hypocrisy to me, though I am convinced that the people of the time saw it as political expediency. A fine line of distinction, an important one no doubt, but still very, very close.

Giuseppe,

I believe I understand your objections. I also believe you miss an important point.

I am, as you point out, citing (very strongly) an abstract concept, one cecelia expands. I reject your labelling it a myth, for a very important reason: at the time, it was the reality of their political existence.

Then and since, there was and is plenty of room for criticism. I acknowledge that and respect your take on it. However, there was nothing mythic about the struggle to get the states to ratify the Constitution, nor was there an abstract concept governing the very real self-interests of certain parties across and within the states. Religion was a very sore point. The motivation for the Bill of Rights was simple: these were statutes or clauses intended to be in the original Constitution, but had to be removed in order to get it ratified.

One may call that a bait-and-switch. I would agree with that assessment. It reflects the politics of the time… and lives on since then and right now. I find it distasteful in the extreme. I don’t know how to eliminate it short of finding a miraculous conversion of the vast majority of politicians to a strongly worded code of ethics that starts with something like this: no legislation will be crafted outside the boundaries of its primary intention. Omnibus bills, no amendments of complete non sequitur as quid pro quo to get them passed, and open and transparent debate on every clause of the legislation in question.

Giuseppe my friend, don’t be such a cynic. “The name of The People” has certainly been abused more often than it has been sincerely invoked, but it is not nothing. Consent can be rather passive in politics, but the consent of the people — whatever the people will put up with — is qualitatively different from the will of the monarch.

It is true, as Mark Twain highlighted with some amusement, that having declared a republic, “the people” fell all over themselves at any intimation of visiting monarchy or nobility from Europe — real or imposters. It is true that some elite tends to rise and take charge and dominate the landscape. Still, a republic is a republic, it is not always an oligarchy, it has some capacity for oligarchies to be deposed.

The CSA did not “dissent.” The CSA was a band of wealthy malcontents who refused to accept the result of an election. They blundered badly and paid a terrible price for it, as did, unfortunately, the rest of the country. The southern resistance to the CSA was genuinely committed to the government “established by our fathers” which had been an attempt at government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” unlike the CSA, which rode along on ditties about “For this land of liberty I do not give a damn” and “I hate the declaration of Independence too.”

The Supreme Court’s proper constitutional function is to keep the jurisdictional commands of the constitution in place, which is more substantial than is assumed by those who shed crocodile tears over “judicial activism,” but more limited than the advocates of a “living constitution” would have it. By its very nature, the judicial function is not one that sways with each passing wave of majority sentiment.

I once heard a doctrinaire communist define the dictatorship of the proletariat as one in which the government remains in power so long as the proletariat will put up with it, rather than so long as the bourgeoisie will put up with it. The truth of this definition was proven when the proletariat and peasantry of Poland decided not to put up with the government any more.

What is ludicrous is the way Democrats and Republicans, finding themselves on the losing end of this or that political battle, cry that “the people demand” whatever is on the losing party’s agenda. Or even the winning party, which has generally won on different grounds than what the elected representatives are most earnestly determined to accomplish.